1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to devices that provide an alarm to notify medical personnel of a bed wetting occurrence or other emergency situation as a patient may encounter.
2. Prior Art
There are a number of liquid sensing devices involving configurations of electrically operated liquid sensing arrangements where the presence of urine creates an electrical connection to an alarm device. Examples of such earlier devices are shown in U.S. Patents to: Seiger, U.S. Pat. No. 2,644,050; Kroening et al, U.S. Pat. No. 2,726,294; Fendole et al, U.S. Pat. No. 4,069,817; Hatfield, U.S. Pat. No. 4,020,478; Regal, U.S. Pat. No. 4,163,449; and Uyehara, U.S. Pat. No. 4,347,503.
The above U.S. patents are directed towards devices for sensing the liquid presence between conductor elements positioned under a patient. Along with liquid sensing arrangements each involves connecting a power source through the liquid sensing arrangement to complete an electrical circuit to an alarm device for alerting a health care provider to the patient's wet condition. In a patent to Wilson, U.S. Pat. No. 4,271,406, a liquid presence sensing circuit is hard wired to a nurse's station alarm to alert that station that liquid is present in a patient's bed. Neither this arrangement, nor the other cited earlier patents, however, involves either a removable mattress pad with strip conductor that is easily changed and reconnected into a circuit, which reconnection resets a relay thereof, or a radio transmitter and receiver system as taught by the present invention.
Further unique to the present invention it is also applicable for use with a wheelchair and includes tilt sensing of that wheelchair for alerting health care personnel to the wheelchair tipping over.